11/5/2008 -- The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) is ready to begin beta testing its latest certification exam: LPIC-303: Security. The first public testing will be done Nov. 12 and 13 in the Netherlands at LinuxWorld Utrecht. The betas will be free, and the exam is scheduled to go live in February 2009.

While the weighing won't be known until after the beta testing, the exam will consist of the following four "topics" (what others call domains) and their subtopics:

• Cryptography
  OpenSSL
  Advanced GPG
  Encrypted Filesystems
  
  
• General security
  SELinux
  Other mandatory access control systems
  Netfilter/iptables
  Host configuration management
  Extended attributes and ACLs
  
  
• Service hardening
  BIND/DNS
  Mail services
  Apache/HTTP/HTTPS
  FTP
  OpenSSH
  NFSv4
  Syslog
  
  
• Intrusion detection and monitoring
  Intrusion detection
  Network security scanning
  Network monitoring

More information on key knowledge areas and files/terms/utilities to know for each subtopic can be found here.

Free Beta: Sun Certified Developer for Java Web Services
Sun is offering the SCDJWS exam for free through Prometric testing centers while it's in beta to those who are already certified as a Sun Certified Programmer (SCJP).

The beta runs until Nov. 21 and consists of 160 questions that have to be answered within 240 minutes. It's recommended that candidates have six to 12 months of experience developing Java Web Services.

Book of the Week: 'CCNA Wireless Certification Guide'
Once upon a time, the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification was available only in generic form. While that flavor is still in existence, there are now versions available that specialize in security, voice and wireless. The latter of these is what the CCNA Wireless Official Exam Certification Guide tackles.

Divided into 21 chapters and five parts, this book walks the reader through all the topic areas that appear on the exam, from wireless LAN fundamentals to final preparation. Each chapter begins with the "Do I Know This Already?" quiz and ends with a review of key concepts and a definition of key terms. This deviates from most study guides in that all the questions are at the beginning of the chapters; none are at the end. All told, there are just under 300 questions in the book and if you can answer them, you should be ready to sail through the 640-721 (IUWNE) exam.